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A fitting legacy for Jeff & a great honour for the winners! Congratulations to all of them.

CINEMA AUDIO SOCIETY UNVEILS INAUGURAL JEFFREY S. WEXLER AWARD FOR ADVANCEMENT IN SOUND TECHNOLOGY Named in honor of the revered sound mixer, the new award recognizes groundbreaking technological advancements in sound mixing. LOS ANGELES — February 12, 2026 — The Cinema Audio Society today announced the inaugural Jeffrey S. Wexler Award for Advancement in Sound Technology. The annual award honors individuals, companies or products whose innovations have significantly improved existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they have materially changed how sound is recorded, edited, mixed or delivered. This year’s award will honor achievements in non-linear technology for sound recording, editing and mixing. Recipients will be honored at the CAS Awards on March 7, 2026 at the Beverly Hilton. Congratulations to Evan Brooks, Peter Gotcher, Glenn Sanders, and Howard Stark https://cinemaaudiosociety.org/cinema-audio-society-unveils-inaugural-jeffrey-s-wexler-award-for-advancement-in-sound-technology/

I am somewhat interested in the 8018, but I already have an MKH 30/40 rig and a 30/8040 rig. Would just be a purchase of convenience tbh. My notes on MS Recording for Documentary : Unless there is a specific time noted on the Callsheet for Ambience Recordings there is a good chance that you will never really have some private, on the clock time to record {hopefully with access to a vehicle}. Clear communication with Post Production is essential. Decoding an M/S recording is a task that can be completely screwed up. Happens all the time. Travelling with an M/S rig will involve an extra Pelican Case and extra cabling. This is why the "all in one 8018" is appealing to me.

Thanks for the clarifications Karl. Keeping that local-ish option available for those of us north (and east) of the border is certainly a big part of the decisions to stay Lectro, and I'm happy that a solution was found. apologies for pre-emptively freaking out.

'Good' rather depends on perspective: there are better mic arrays for smaller musical performances, even outdoors (and you don't mention where you would be recording), and it is, naturally, outperformed by an MKH 8030 + 8050 MS pair. And no, it isn't especially like an MKH 416. I've done a couple of blog-posts on the mic, exploring the fundamentals, its use as a stereo mic and how it compares to the MKH 8060, with sound samples included, which you might find useful. I provided a link to one of the posts above, but, for ease of reference, here are both: https://drbadphil.com/stereo-with-the-sennheiser-mkh-8018 https://drbadphil.com/sennheiser-mkh-8018-vs-mkh-8060-and-mkh-8030 Cheers, Roland

Would this mic be good for smaller musical performances? How directional is the mid signal? Is it like a 416?

Ok great, that's a much better arrangement than I assumed. Thanks for spelling it out. A lesson in not getting our news from social media...

https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/bwfmerge/ Tool to eg replace TX with transmitter saved files, merge multiple recorders, patch / re-route etc. It now also can (destructive) alter metadata, with an Undo (so you can do an in-place change and undo / revert to original later on) And, there is now a player that shows all levels of all tracks. The images at the page are unrelated to the current version, and the latest version is for Mac, will update Win on request. Please toy with it and tell me what more needs to be done.

Joe will retain "authorized warranty repair" status, thus keep all warranty repairs for customers in Canada, if they choose to send those repairs to Joe. Canadian customers have always had the option of sending their units to the office in Toronto, or the HQ in Rio Rancho. Most often, they chose to send them to Joe. So, this isn't likely to change. We will continue to offer our customers in Canada the option, and we'll support Joe with a supply of parts and boards. He'll be able to bill us for warranty work. It looks like he will be located a dealer's shop in Toronto, where the billing & overhead will be handled for him, and he can concentrate on repairs. As soon as we have all the details lined up, we'll be communicating that information.

And now they are both being acquired by Audiotonix, along with Wisycom (which makes what was Audio Ltd and Wisy new bedfellows?) Jez

I picked up this mic for a feature doc I am working on with a French director who wanted an MS workflow --a film that has a lot of static, ambient shots. So far I have found it useful to this end, and have also utilized it on a small music documentary series. Was quite happy with the results when filming a choral performance with MS. Around here it's not a common workflow so I can really only use it in specific instances, primarily doc. Generally I use an MKH50 as my interior and exterior "run and gun" mic but this one might take pride of place for those workflows as I sometimes appreciate having some more reach, especially in urban environments. Besides the 8018 I don't have an extensive collection of mics, just some 50s and a 416. I made up a 5 pin to 3 pin cable to use the 8018 as a mono mic with a wireless boom when needed. This makes it a pretty versatile mic and honestly pretty great value considering what it can achieve.

I was actually looking for some user experience on the mic today. Good to hear you like it. (sadly the final product does not make use of it's full potential;) Will you be using the mic in favour of others and if so what kind of shoots would you prefer it? I'm looking forward to try one out soon!

Recently had the opportunity to use my 8018 exclusively on a short doc. I used it primarily as a mono shotgun and captured some lovely stereo ambience when I had time. AFAIK none of my stereo recordings made it into the final product 🥹 but it was a great opportunity to explore this microphone’s capability. Setup was 8018 (MS) in an old Rycote basket cabled direct into an 633. I also used MTP60 with 6060s on talent but kept the lav faded down all day in favour of the boom. I think it’s a great sounding mic if you like the Sennheiser sound and find it quite forgiving to boom with. Not sure how to describe this but I find the mic to be tonally quite dry compared to my previous generation Sennheiser mics.

The model is that his customers used to come to him through Lectro. He would get any warranty repair jobs or any jobs that required return to Lectro for repair. All of which would be paid for by Lectrosonics. Now all of those jobs will be sent to New Mexico instead. Also, they might not even go to New Mexico if the parent company has decided to centralize service for all the brands under their umbrella. The jobs he keeps will be from the Canadian customers who now actively choose a local repair shop (Joe) over official Lectro repairs — mainly customers with whom he already has a relationship. So he'll lose all of the warranty work, all new Lectro customers who don't know he exists, a significant portion of existing customers who will prefer an "official" repair shop over a Canadian one, and likely also all of the work referred from retail suppliers. "Full factory support" means he will continue to have access to spare parts, schematics & other proprietary information. It doesn't mean Lectro will keep sending customers to him. And, even if I'm wrong about Lectro not sending him work, he is now responsible for all the overhead (customer communication, billing, shipping, etc) that used to be done by Lectro, which ultimately comes out of his profits. He now has pricing freedom, so he can potentially raise prices, and his overhead may be lower than before (due to fewer people in the chain), but if he doesn't do those things already in his existing business, he will have to learn how to do them & set up efficient systems. It's not trivial.

Well, if there's nobody official in Canada now and he was the former official and continues his work (and assuming most of his current customers) and has "full factory support" from Lectro then I don't see how he'd lose a lot of his primary stream. Maybe I don't understand that model well enough.

Losing official status means he's lost his primary sales stream. How would he earn more?

Or he sustains the same or perhaps more if he doesn't have to share the profits in licensing/etc.?

I look forward to the updated news from Lectro, and appreciate the speed with which Karl replied online. great news that Joe has agreed to continue his fantastic service also good to know that Cramped Attic can do some unofficial repairs, I'll certainly keep that in mind for the future.

So, probably Joe takes a pay cut & can't call himself official support any more? Worth noting that the Dave Hable / Cramped Attic here in Vancouver can also do many unofficial Lectro repairs as well.

This is sad news. Joe at Lectro Canada was a talented tech and a fine chap. Similar to the late Bill Carter at Sennheiser Canada. Now with both offices gone it will be a major PITA to get items serviced. In the music gear industry they have "warranty approved" independent technicians in many countries, avoiding the hassle of shipping and returning stuff overseas and all the paperwork and fees. Hopefully Joe can offer that service here in Canada....

This is almost certainly related to Lectro being acquired by Rode, and I would bet that service is going to suffer wherever you are. Which sucks, because Lectro's service was a big reason to buy from them. I guess we'll see how it goes... I honestly had no idea there *was* a Lectro Canada ... I recall dealing with New Mexico directly when I had Lectro stuff. We had a discussion about this in Vancouver and people were celebrating, apparently because the Lectro Canada service wasn't good. I do share your worries though. I also have huge concerns about shipping things over the border in this political environment. I had to send something back to Zaxcom for repair earlier this year and it wasn't fun. Canada Post now requires that you pre-pay the tariffs using a 3rd party (US-based) service ... even when there aren't tariffs to pay (which there aren't on repairs, at least as long as Trump continues to respect that part of CUSMA). I eventually found a way to register as a business that let me avoid the payment, but not the paperwork or having to deal with the third party, but it took me about half a day to figure it out.

I know that social media is not the place to get your news, but reading some fairly disappointing reports concerning closure of the Canadian Lectrosonics office. I have used Lectro in one form or another since 1999, as boom op, utility, and sound mixer. First in Australia, then in my forever home on the Atlantic coast of Canada. Having a local repair option was one of the main reasons in my decision to and go all in on the D2 system these past few years - as I shifted from Booming, to Mixing. Losing that local repair option absolutely causes a re-evaluation of that decision My fingers are crossed that some sort of solution can be found, and Lectrosonics' Canadian clients aren't left out in the cold. Ian Thomson www.thompsound.ca

Hi, the power setting is not yet implemented. It will come!

Yeah DX revive is great, but sometimes it makes the tone a bit metallic. Good to have options. I can also believe SpectraLayers with DX revive on the speech layer can be a good aproach to beef up a thin dialouge without touch the backround too much.